German maker Warwick is offering a wide range of different bass amplifiers alongside their famous basses.

One of their newest products is the Warwick LWA 1000 – an ultra-compact, yet very powerful amp head.

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The Warwick LWA 1000 (current price in Finland: 789 €) is small and lightweight enough (2.75 kg) to fit into many gig bags. Optionally, you can also get a rack installation kit or a padded shoulder bag for this head.

As hinted at by its name, the LWA 1000 offers you up to 1,000 Watts of power (into a 4 Ohm cabinet, 500 W into 8 Ohms). Warwick have managed to squeeze this all into a compact package by using a Class D power amplifier.

Warwick’s two-channel preamp has been transplanted from their Hellborg-series, and promises to offer audiophile sound quality from its low-noise Class A circuits.

The two channels of the LWA 1000 are identical, and they can either be used to amplify two different instruments (each plugged into their own input) or to offer two different sounds for use with a single bass (a footswitch comes included with the amp).

There’s a four-band EQ section in each channel, offering up to 12 dBs of cut/boost per band.

The last link in the preamps’ signal chain is Warwick’s easy-to-use compressor.

The master section offers an auxiliary input to feed your mp3-player into, as well as a headphones output for silent practice.

The stylishly understated look of the Warwick LWA 1000 calls to mind high-end HiFi-equipment. You can get the amp head in two finishes – brushed aluminium and matte black.

”Lightweight and compact” doesn’t equal ”stripped-down” in the LWA’s case – this is a fully featured bass amplifier:

Of the four jacks on the back panel one is the tuner output, two are used for the effects loop, and the last one is an unbalanced, line level output. This Warwick head also sports a built-in DI-box with its dedicated Pre/Post-switch, as well as a ground lift switch for safe earth loop breaking.

In addition to the amp head itself (and its power cord), the package includes a footswitch and a long, pro-quality TRS-lead (aka a stereo cable).

You use your regular instrument lead to connect your bass to the footswitch, and the TRS-cable goes between the footswitch and either one of the LWA 1000’s channel inputs. The TRS tip carries the bass signal, while the ring connection is used to switch between amp channels.

The pro-quality WCA 410 (current price in Finland: 380 €) is a chunky bass-reflex cabinet, equipped with four ten-inch speakers and a four-inch treble horn.

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Warwick’s LWA 1000 offers truckloads of ultra-clean, quality bass tone in a very compact format. In contrast to many other bass amplifiers the LWA adds only very little unwanted colouration to your instrument’s tone.

Some bassists rely on certain sonic artifacts from their amp for their own signature sound (like tube saturation or distortion, or a non-linear frequency curve), and this is as valid an approach as others (rock on, guys!). Others – myself included – get their kicks from just the type of clean and linear amplification the Warwick LWA 1000 head provides.

The channel EQs work like a dream and the built-in compressors are musical and intuitive to use.

In the studio you will appreciate this head’s processor controlled ventilator, which works very quietly, and only springs into action when needed.

The sound clips I have recorded will give you a good idea of the sheer power this Warwick provides. If you listen closely, you can hear the metal grilles of the studio’s air conditioning system rattle along with the playing in places:

The good people of EBS Sweden are now bringing a healthy dose of fuzz to the bassist’s toolbox.

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The EBS FuzzMo (current price in Finland: 169,90 €) is a fuzz-type high gain distortion developed especially for bass.

This stompbox is made in China to the EBS’ exacting standards. It’s a sturdy pedal with very positive feeling controls.

The FuzzMo can be powered in three ways:

If you use an EBS amp from the Drome-, Gorm-, HD- or TD-series, you can use a TRS-cable (aka a stereo cable) to feed phantom power from the amp to the effect pedal.

The FuzzMo pedal also runs off a standard 9 V battery, but you will need a screwdriver to take off the base plate first.

The third alternative is to employ a Boss-type power supply (9 V DC, centre negative) to fire up the stompbox.

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Even though the EBS FuzzMo looks somewhat similar to the company’s Billy Sheehan -pedal, the controls on the fuzz work in a different way.

The FuzzMo doesn’t do ”nice and sweet” – the Gain control offers fuzz from medium-crunchy to balls-to-the-wall-fuzz. Shape adjusts the tone of the fuzz effect – not in the way a traditional tone control does, but rather by changing the waveform of the fuzz signal. At seven o’clock the sound is quite warm and organic with the waveform approaching a square, while five o’clock is far brighter and more aggressive with the waveform resembling a triangle.

The mini-switch underneath the FuzzMo-logo (called Character) also plays an important part in the stompbox’ sound:

Switched to the left no EQ’ing is applied to the signal (FLAT). In the middle position there’s a slight attenuation of the mid-range. SCOOP on the right side results in a very Metal-style scooped-mid tone with plenty of bite.

Modern bass effects often split the bass signal at the input. One half is fed through the effect, while the other half is kept dry and mixed into the wet signal before it reaches the output. The advantage of doing things this way is that it enables you to keep your bottom end and dynamic attack intact.

This is just the way EBS’ FuzzMo works, too:

You use the Volume knob to adjust the fuzz signal’s volume level, and then use the Blend control to add the desired amount of dry bass. This feature is especially important in fuzz pedals for bass, because the hard clipping of a fuzz effect practically negates all your playing dynamics by design. With the FuzzMo there will be no problems with your tone becoming mushy, clogged up and indistinct, because the Blend control lets you restore your bass guitar’s punch and low end.

Here’s a bit recorded with a Jazz Bass (both pickups on) and a relatively low Gain setting:

Note that on all these audio clips the Gain control stayed below one o’clock. If you want you can take things much, much further with this EBS-pedal!

The FuzzMo is a typical EBS-pedal – it’s a sturdy, pro-quality stompbox and it sounds great. If you’re a purveyor of sleazy, dirty and aggressive bass tones, you should definitely give this baby a spin!

Marshall’s DSL5C combo is the newest – and smallest – member of the DSL-series.

The DSL-range has its roots in the year 1997, when Marshall introduced their – now legendary – JCM2000 Dual Super Lead -head. The JCM2000 was the first Marshall amp that combined a vintage-voiced Plexi-channel and a modern Ultra Gain -channel in one chassis.

The production run of the original DSL-series was discontinued in 2007, with the JVM-range superseding it. The new DSL-series offers the company’s most-affordable all-valve amps to date, which are produced at Marshall’s own facility in Vietnam.

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As you can easily guess by its name, the Marshall DSL5C (current street price in Finland around 520 €) is a five-Watt, two-channel combo.

In terms of its looks and the quality of its finish, this is a genuine Marshall. Quality control at the Vietnamese factory seems to as stringent as in Britain, and the combo looks great and feels well-made and sturdy.

The DSL5C comes with an open back cabinet. The upper opening in the cabinet’s back is covered with a metal grille to keep stray fingers and hot tubes apart form each other.

This little Marshall uses three preamp valves (ECC83/12AX7), plus a single power amp tube (ECC99/12BH7).

The DSL5C’s speaker is a ten-inch Celestion Ten 30, which is meant to provide a big, warm bottom-end, coupled with a healthy dose of ”Celestion grunt” and bite.

This compact combo weighs less than five kilos, making it very easy to carry, using its rubberised handle.

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The Marshall DSL5C is a two-channel, all-valve combo:

Channel one – Classic Gain – is voiced to give you a classic Marshall 1959 -style tone and gain structure. The Classic-channel goes from bright and clean all the way to mid-level, classic crunch. Due to the fact that this channel doesn’t have a master volume, distorted sounds can only be had at very high volume levels – unless you switch to Low Power mode (more on this further down).

True to its name, the second channel – Ultra Gain – is made for modern, saturated high-gain sounds.

Both channels share a three-band EQ-section, which means a certain amount of tonal compromises will have to be made. But thanks to the way both channels have been voiced, a shared EQ doesn’t pose any real problems in the Marshall DSL5C’s case.

Pushing in the Tone Shift switch will give you a thinned out, sharper mid-range, making it ideal for many Thrash Metal tones. Engaging Deep bolsters the bottom-end at the output stage for a fatter sound.

The back panel offers you an effects loop, as well as a footswitch jack for the DSL5C’s sturdy channel switch (supplied, see pic below).

There’s a very nifty speaker-emulated output designed into this Marshall combo, which works in two different ways, depending on the setting of the Power-switch:

In Full Power mode the output gives out a line level signal, which can be sent to a mixing console or your recording equipment. The speaker will run even with a plug connected to the output. In Low Power mode (the manual says 0.5 Watts, the website 1 W) the output level is changed to work with headphones, and plugging a pair of cans in will mute the speaker. The Aux In only works in Low-mode, and its signal will be sent directly to the headphones.

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In my opinion Marshall’s DSL5C is a fantastic-sounding little Rock- and Metal-combo, ideally suited for use in your bedroom, for practice, for recording and for backstage warm-up.

My only small niggle would be with the emulated output of our review sample, which produced more hiss than what I’d have expected. Anyhow, I was able to EQ out most of the hiss for the sound clips, meaning it really isn’t that much of a problem. And then there’s always the possibility that there was something wrong with this particular combo…

The DSL5C’s two channels enable you to get a wide variety of different Rock-, Metal- and Thrash-sounds out of this little combo, depending on your gain-, volume- and EQ-settings, but also on the power mode chosen. Going to Low Power doesn’t only drop your output levels, but also adds a lot of tasty, squashy power amp compression. This means that you can choose between very tight sounds (Full Power) and fatter, compressed tones (Low Power) by using the switch on the back panel.

All sound clips have been recorded in Full Power mode to allow for direct comparison between the miked up sound of the speaker and the speaker-emulated output.

For starters I played my Stratocaster through a clean setting on the Classic-channel (recorded with a Shure SM57):

Marshall’s cute and cuddly new five-watter, the DSL5C, is a great choice as a first tube combo (”My first Marshall”), as well as a precision tool for any guitarist in those situations, when high wattage is more of a problem than an advantage (like at home or in the project studio).

The DSL5C delivers genuine, all-valve Marshall-tone in a handy package, and the combo’s Vietnamese origin means it’s also very affordable.